Flowers!

If you’ve ever visited my Mom and Dad’s yard, you are well aware that I come from a family of avid gardeners! My grandma, being from England, had a beautiful English-style country garden in her yard. She passed the love of flowers and planting on to my mom, who in turn, passed this wonderful past time on to me. As far back as I can remember, I helped my mom pick out flowers at the flower nurseries every spring. I used to collect the little flower identification tags and make books, documenting each flower type and its name and qualities! I still get excited by the thought of going to the nursery to get my own flowers to plant in my yard each year! It was interesting for me to find out that Paul’s mom Joan is also an avid gardener. Thus, you will understand why flowers are going to be a very important part of our wedding.

I started thinking about flowers for the tables quite early on because the milk glass vase idea was one of the first things that I had thought about. (See my post about colour schemes for more details.) I want to arrange the vases in groups of three or four on each table, placing a mixture of sizes and shapes on each table. I am thinking of buying a variety of bunches of bouquets to fill the vases rather than buying specific centrepieces. I would LIKE to fill them with tulips, gerber daisies, peonies, hydrangea, baby’s breath, and lilacs, but I don’t think that they will be in season at that point. I still have to go and talk to florists to get information in this area. Here are a few table arrangements that I love. There are also many, many great pictures at Unique Floral Expressions .

As for the bouquets, after some careful consideration, I have decided to make my own for myself and the wedding party out of silk flowers. At first, I was thinking that fake flowers would look cheap and artificial. However, the silk flowers today are so realistic looking, and it seems more and more common for brides to make their own bouquets now. It will save me the hassle of picking them up the morning of the wedding, they’re much cheaper, and we can keep them and use them as flower arrangements when the wedding is done. Michael’s has some beautiful silk flowers, and after making many trips there with 50% coupons in hand, Mom and I have found quite a few realistic looking silk peonies in light pink, white, fuchsia, and light green. I’m planning to add blue hydrangea, some lilacs, and white tulips to the bunches, but I haven’t found any that I like enough. There are tons of great peony bouquets, some real and some fake flowers, found at Wedding by Color and Project Wedding. When arranging my bouquet, I’m going to be using some of these peony bouquets from Flickr as inspiration. I also found a great online tutorial on Wedding Bee that teaches you how to assemble the bouquet. I plan to make mine and my bridesmaids’ bouquets like this, but to add a vintage locket to each bouquet, like this.

This eHow page provides as fantastic tutorial on how to make and arrange bouquets:

Here are a few other arrangements that I like.

I love her dress too. The line Anthropologie is launching a wedding collection very soon, and this is a sample. I can’t wait to see it!

(Above, that’s kind of what I am making my bouquet to look like.)

To decorate the church, I am not quite sure as to what kind of arrangements I would like at the front of the church. Perhaps I will make a couple of bunches similar to the bouquets and fill some large vases with the bouquets. We bought some pretty pink and white pomanders to hang from the pews, most likely adorned with tulle along the pews and large bow, such as these below:

In regards to bouteniers, I think that I will have those made. I HAVE found quite a few neat and creative DIY bouteniers though!

Once I have my bouquets assembled, I will post some pictures. Stay tuned! For now, I’ll leave you with some great unconventional bouquets!

How cute is THAT?!

Bouquets made of vintage brooches! Very cute!

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Comments

I know what you mean about the spring gardening excitement – I’m living it right now!!! It’s the pay-off after our long winters! I love your choices for flowers on the tables, but I think you’re right about most of them not being in season in August. However, Pam (my fellow gardening friend) and I have been researching hydrangeas, and we are both going to plant bushes of it this summer, so maybe by next summer they will be in full bloom! not sure that I’ll have lots of blooms, but they will be in season at that time of year, so should be available from florists. They are such a beautiful flower – I always thought they couldn’t be grown here, but Lois Hole, my gardening guru, highly recommends them!

Joan,
That’s great news about the hydrangeas! It’ll be neat to see when yours bloom! I’m glad to hear that they’ll possibly be in season around August as well!
I can’t wait to start planting my flowers! Now that the weekend looks rainy, though, I don’t know how much planting I’ll get done in the future!

Chelsi!! I have that same photo clipping from the Martha Stewart Wedding magazine with the bouquet and the locket around it!! i have held onto that for years!! please let me know if you ever come across a 4way stirling silver locket that ISNT in the shape of a heart…ive been looking forever for one…
i love all of your ideas!!!

Hey Ashley! That’s SO crazy about the clipping! It’ll be neat to see if it works out because I’ll take pics and then I can tell you how I made the bouquets so that you can try that too! By 4way locket, what do you mean? Once I know, I’ll keep my eye open!